The number of ransomware attacks on businesses and individuals has risen exponentially in recent years. Increasingly, small and midsized businesses are vulnerable to these malware attacks. Their data is essentially locked up, or held hostage, and cybercriminals demand a ransom in exchange for releasing computer files and business documents. The numbers are staggering. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that ransomware attacks cost victims about $209 million in the first three months of 2016 alone.

This pressure on businesses of all sizes means there is a bright spotlight on data protection. A backup and recovery strategy is cited again and again by industry analysts as the best way to say no to cybercriminals — and avoid paying ransom at all.

What Happens to Organizations without Backup?

In 2016, many businesses, hospitals, schools and other organizations learned the hard way that a solid backup strategy is the best protection against ransomware. Back in February, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was forced to pay $17,000 following a ransomware attack that paralyzed important medical equipment and blocked access to patient files. The medical center ultimately regained access to its IT systems, but not before incoming patients had to be diverted to different area hospitals.

Small businesses are proving to be highly attractive — and lucrative — targets for cybercriminals as well. A recent Ponemon Institute survey of 618 respondents from small and midsize businesses revealed that about half had been hit with ransomware in the last year — and about half of the victims paid the ransom because they lacked a proper backup strategy. The average amount of the ransom request was $2,500.

Alternatively, organizations that take backup and recovery seriously emerge from ransomware attacks largely unscathed. In another ransomware case that grabbed headlines in 2016, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency refused to pay a $73,000 ransom demand — and proceeded to recover all of its files from backup.

Protect your Business from Ransomware in 2017

IT industry analysts and cybersecurity experts agree that backup is the best defense against ransomware. Just ask white hat hacker David Kennedy, the founder of cybersecurity firms TrustedSEC and Binary Defense Systems.

“I think having a good backup strategy is probably the number one thing that you should focus your efforts on,” said Kennedy, “because that ultimately is going to save you on the day of a disaster.”

But there are also some important steps a business can take to avoid getting hit with ransomware in the first place. For starters, be sure to invest in firewall and antivirus software.

It’s also important to educate yourself and your employees about how to avoid a ransomware infection. On FightRansomware.com, and on our regular podcast, we feature lots of content that’s focuses on user education.

Norman Guadagno is Chief Evangelist and Senior Vice President of Marketing at Carbonite, a provider of cloud backup and recovery solutions for small and midsize businesses.

There’s so many ways to develop a brand, and so much advice on how to do it. It can be hard to distill the enormous amount of information available to small businesses who need help letting people know why their company is so important. Here are my four best tips for growing your business and your brand.

Get to Know the U.S. Small Business Administration

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is quite amazing and most people don’t realize how many resources they have. In addition to connecting small businesses that need funding with lenders, they offer tons of information on every aspect of running a business, including developing a marketing plan, the relationship between marketing and sales, and how to set a marketing budget.

Use Social Media — but Don’t do Too Much Too Soon

Entrepreneurs getting started with social media marketing often make the mistake of overdoing it. You don’t need to be everywhere, and your messaging doesn’t need to convey all things to all people. Begin by picking a small number of social media channels that are going to help your business. Then stick to messaging that’s closely related to the core value proposition of your business. Facebook is great because it can target customers based on local geographies and other parameters. Sure, it’s a little old fashioned, but it’s basically the yellow pages of the internet age, and it’s also a way to connect people directly to your business. Others like Twitter can be used in a similar way, but Facebook is a great starting point.

Take Advantage of the Cloud

The great thing about being a newer, smaller business is that you’re not handcuffed by the same technology investments as your older, larger competition. You’re free to invest in all kinds of cloud services that place the burden of technology management on someone else. Cloud services are easy to get up and running, and they give you near infinite room to grow. On the marketing front, cloud-based services like Canva, allow you to create graphic designs for social media and other marketing efforts. Constant Contact can help you send email newsletters to current and potential customers. And there’s certainly no shortage of cloud-based marketing automation applications to choose from.

Protect Your Most Valuable Marketing Asset — Data

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in: You’re going to be generating lots of data about orders, seasonal spikes in sales, customer preferences, contact information and much more. That information will fuel all of your marketing efforts going forward — and it needs to be protected. That’s why you should consider a cloud backup service like Carbonite. With cloud backup, your data is easily accessible from any internet-connected device — and cloud backup protects your business data from malware, computer theft, accidental deletion and natural disasters.

Norman Guadagno is Chief Evangelist and Senior Vice President of Marketing at Carbonite, a provider of cloud backup and recovery solutions for small and midsize businesses.

I recently caught up with cybersecurity expert Eric Vanderburg, the director of information systems and security at Geronov, to get his take on some of the problems with the username and password system and to find out if it’s time for a change.

A lot of people are saying passwords are dead — or that the very concept of passwords is becoming passé. What’s your take on this?

Eric Vanderburg: What it really comes down to is the difficulty users have accepting some of the alternate technologies. At the same time, a lot of legacy systems are still reliant on usernames and passwords. The problem is that people have to remember more and more passwords over time — sometimes it’s 40 passwords they’re trying to remember. They write them down. They use the same password for everything. They put them in a password management application, which potentially transfers the risk from a local computer to a cloud application. So I don’t know if I would say that passwords are dead, but they’re definitely in need of a replacement.

Click on the player below to listen to the entire Eric Vanderburg interview now:

But are password managers vulnerable to getting hacked?

Vanderburg: Yes, they are. If it’s on your local machine, you could potentially get infected by malware that has a key logger in it. As soon as you log into your password management app, the malware has your password and it’s going to extract the rest of the passwords from the manager and start utilizing them. If you use a cloud application, it may have protections but, if there is an attack on the cloud provider your credentials could be exposed.

What do you think about two-factor authentication (2FA), where login attempts to online accounts are verified via a second device owned by the user, such as a smartphone?

Vanderburg: 2FA is certainly better than just having a username and a password. However, at Geronov, we don’t recommend using text messages or email for 2FA because of the risk of interception. It’s relatively easy for cybercriminals to grab the plain text component of the information contained in text messages and email.

What do you think is happening in terms of new technologies like biometrics?

Vanderburg: The interesting thing about those technologies is that they’ve become a lot easier for users. When biometrics first came out, for one thing they were really expensive, and two, it required some sort of add-on hardware that users weren’t very familiar with. So there was all this extra training, and systems would break or malfunction and the users wouldn’t be able to do their jobs. But in the last few years we’ve seen things like iPhone and Android phones do fingerprint recognition, and Windows Hello offers facial recognition. And you don’t need to buy anything extra in order to use the feature. The software supports biometrics and that makes it a lot easier for users to adopt the technology.

Is there anything new under the sun when it comes to password management best practices? What advice do you have for people?

Vanderburg: I still like pass-phrases [for passwords]. Mine are long, goofy and convoluted. But you say it once or twice and you realize, ‘oh ya, I can remember this.’ And try to make each pass-phrase very different. People just like to substitute one word or something like that when creating new pass-phrases. But you’ve got to remember if a pass-phrase is ever exposed, a cybercriminal is going to try similar variations on that password later on.

Norman Guadagno is Chief Evangelist and Senior Vice President of Marketing at Carbonite. Portions of this interview were edited for clarity.

]]>https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/usernames-and-passwords-becoming-obsolete.html/feed1Six Small Business Resolutions to Keep in 2017https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/small-business-resolutions-to-keep-in-2017.html
https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/small-business-resolutions-to-keep-in-2017.html#commentsMon, 09 Jan 2017 15:30:04 +0000https://smallbiztrends.com/?p=427805Sponsored Post Carbonite's Norman Guadagno shares six New Year's resolutions that will help your business stay strong, relevant and competitive in 2017. Learn more!]]>Sponsored Post

This time of year many of us share a longing to make a fresh start. With that in mind, here are six must-keep New Year’s resolutions that will help your small business stay strong, relevant and competitive in 2017 and beyond:

1. Find the right technology provider and build a relationship

As a small business, there’s a strong chance that you count on local IT service and solutions companies to help manage computers, servers, business applications — all the technology you need to run the business. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when searching for a technology partner:

Look for providers of complete end-to-end solutions, as opposed to one-off products.

Ask other business owners about their experience with local technology providers. Did the IT provider act as a trusted partner and tailor service to their individual needs?

Test potential partners by giving them a “pilot” project and evaluating their performance.

2. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

You can accomplish this by incorporating responsive design techniques into your website. You can begin by simplifying the navigation of your website, getting rid of PDFs and replacing them with HTML-based pages, testing design options and getting user feedback from family and friends. Make sure your website can easily be found by doing a little Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can begin an SEO project by using tools like Google Keyword Planner and WordTracker to help find words that people search for when looking for products or services that you provide. Then incorporate those keywords into website content and the ‘About’ section of your site so that it’s more likely be discovered by potential customers.

3. Fight ransomware by backing up your data

More and more small and midsize businesses are getting hit with ransomware — nasty computer viruses designed by cybercriminals to encrypt important business files and render them useless until a ransom is paid. And IT industry analysts say the best protection against ransomware is a high-quality backup and disaster recovery strategy. A recent Ponemon Institute survey of 618 IT workers at small businesses revealed that about half had been hit with ransomware, and half of those victims were forced to pay the ransom — many times because they didn’t have a clean backup copy of their relevant customer data or business files. The average amount of the ransom requests was $2,500. This year, resolve to invest in a cloud backup solution because that’s the only way to be certain you’ll get your data back if the business falls victim to ransomware or any other type of disaster.

4. Fire up those neurons by learning something new

Professional development should be more than just a buzz phrase. As a small business owner who wants to remain competitive, you need to continually expand your own skill set and keep up with the latest tools, techniques and technologies that can help the business succeed.

5. Three words: Specialize, specialize, specialize

Face it: There’s a lot of competition out there — a lot of noise in the marketplace. A great way to stand out from the pack is to stop trying to serve everyone’s needs and instead focus on the key areas where your business truly shines. For example, if you’re a baker who makes excellent wedding cakes, double down on that skill by getting the word out and spending less time on products that are just average.

6. Get on top of your financial situation and stay there

Resolve to spend more time digging into the minutia of your business’s finances because you may be surprised at how many opportunities you find to slash costs, increase efficiency and grow profit margins. That means tracking invoices more closely, paying bills on time, asking utility providers for ways to save money, and scoping the market for competitive suppliers. Choose one area to focus on each month and you’ll be very happy with the results. Happy 2017!

Norman Guadagno is Chief Evangelist and Senior Vice President of Marketing at Carbonite.

]]>https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/small-business-resolutions-to-keep-in-2017.html/feed1How to Successfully Establish and Maintain Work-Life Balancehttps://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/maintain-work-life-balance.html
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/maintain-work-life-balance.html#commentsMon, 21 Nov 2016 15:30:37 +0000https://smallbiztrends.com/?p=419353Sponsored Post When you're a busy entrepreneur, achieving a healthy balance between work and family life can be a daunting task. But there are things you can do to make it easier.]]>Sponsored Post

Akim Vann is the owner and founder of The Bakery on Bergen, a very popular and busy spot that’s known for its delicious and creative cookies, cakes and pastries. The Bakery on Bergen just celebrated its second anniversary and Vann couldn’t be more proud. But as a busy mother of four energetic children, Vann knows firsthand just how difficult it can be for small business owners to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

Watch this quick video and you’ll see that Vann’s attitude toward work and family is a big part of the reason why The Bakery on Bergen is so successful:

When you’re a busy entrepreneur, achieving a healthy balance between work and family life can be a daunting task. But there are things you can do to make it easier. For starters, be sure to respect the boundaries that you create for yourself.

If it makes sense, leave your work at work. But if you’re like many people and also have to work from home, try to work only during pre-scheduled times, and create a workspace that’s separate from the rest of the goings on in the house. By setting and respecting boundaries, you’ll reduce stress and your family will always know when it’s work time and when it’s play time.

You should try to maintain a positive attitude—just like Vann does—because that will always benefit your business and family.

]]>https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/maintain-work-life-balance.html/feed2Crisis Management Tips for Small Business Ownershttps://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/small-business-crisis-management.html
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/small-business-crisis-management.html#commentsMon, 14 Nov 2016 15:30:49 +0000https://smallbiztrends.com/?p=419342Sponsored Post Here are a few tips to keep in mind for small business crises management - when the unexpected arises at your small business.]]>Sponsored Post

Fodera manufactures some of the highest-quality and most sought-after guitars in the world. Musicians travel from all over to get their hands on Fodera’s custom-built bass guitars and solid body electric guitars. But Jason DeSalvo, one of the owners of Fodera, remembers a time when things weren’t strumming along quite so smoothly.

Due to a communications error, Fodera customers thought that the waiting period to get a custom built bass was only three months, when in fact the wait time was three and-a-half years. Watch this quick video to find out how DeSalvo solved the messaging problem and got his small business back on track:

When you’re a small business owner, you ‘re bound to make mistakes and face disasters from time to time. But like DeSalvo says, if you keep a positive attitude, refuse to beat yourself up, and do what it takes to solve the problem—you will get through it. It’s all part of being an entrepreneur. Here are a few tips for dealing with crises when they arise at your small business:

1. Maintain a Level Head

Do not get emotional. That will only cloud the issue at hand and make it more difficult for you to focus on finding the right solutions.

2. Clearly Identify the Problem and Make a Plan to Fix It

Take some time to sit down and examine the situation. Then make a clear step-by-step plan to fix it. If it’s an emergency situation, stop the bleeding first. For example, if you’re sending out incorrect communications to customers through various channels, stop doing that immediately. Then do what it takes to correct the situation.

3. Get Outside Help if Needed

Small business owners like to think they can do it all—but they can’t. It’s important to know your limitations and bring in an outside expert or consultant if necessary. If budget constraints prevent you from doing so, find somebody who knows more than you do and get their advice.

]]>https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/small-business-crisis-management.html/feed4Table 87 Reminds Us Why it’s Important to Back up Business Data to the Cloudhttps://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/back-up-business-data.html
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/back-up-business-data.html#commentsMon, 07 Nov 2016 15:30:56 +0000https://smallbiztrends.com/?p=419134Sponsored Post It's critical to back up business data and have a solid plan in place to help you minimize loss, disruption and return to normal operations as quickly as possible.]]>Sponsored Post

Table 87 is a hugely popular and very busy pizza parlor in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by entrepreneur Thomas Cucco, Table 87’s delicious coal-oven baked pizza pies, calzones and creative sandwiches are like a magnet for hungry locals and tourists from all over the world.

One day Thomas Cucco came to work and realized that his computer had crashed. All his bills, customer files, supplier contact information—all the data that the business runs on—was gone. But Cucco isn’t the type of person to let setbacks slow him down. Watch the quick video below to find out why Table 87 never has to worry about losing data again:

What would you do if your company’s emails, billing records, customer files, inventory reports, payroll and tax information suddenly disappeared? If you’re unsure, it’s time to create a disaster preparedness plan. Having a solid plan in place will help businesses minimize loss and disruption and return to normal operations as quickly as possible in the event of a disaster. This is especially critical for small businesses like Table 87. Here are a few things to remember when developing a disaster preparedness strategy:

Make Sure the Plan is Written Down

Be sure the plan includes emergency contact information for your employees, vendors, etc. You’ll also need to have a copy of your plan in a safe location outside of your office or retail location for safe keeping.

Establish a Chain of Command

What if you are unreachable during the time of disaster? It is vital to select and train additional employees to perform emergency operations in their absence. Include this information in the written plan.

Back Up Your Data to the Cloud

Make sure you find a service that works automatically and continually in the background. Doing so can do more than save you money; it can literally save your business. Look for a service that transmits your protected files offsite to secure severs to ensure your files safe from computer crashes, theft, fire, spills, power spikes, power outages, physical accidents and just about anything else that might happen to your small business.

]]>https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/11/back-up-business-data.html/feed1Getting the Right Funding Can be Daunting – But There is Hopehttps://smallbiztrends.com/2016/10/getting-business-funding.html
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/10/getting-business-funding.html#commentsMon, 31 Oct 2016 14:30:52 +0000https://smallbiztrends.com/?p=418444Sponsored Post When you're an entrepreneur attempting to start a small business, getting business funding can be tough. ]]>Sponsored Post

Vendedy is the first social network designed to connect global travelers to street markets. Founded by Forbes30Under30 Entrepreneur Christine Souffrant Ntim, the small business’s goal is to digitize the $10 trillion dollar street market economy and make it accessible to anyone and everyone.

But when Ntim started out, she had an incredibly difficult time getting the funding she needed. Watch this quick video to find out how Vendedy turned fails into sales:

When you’re an entrepreneur attempting to start a small business, getting funding can be tough. That’s especially true if you’re like Ntim and trying to launch something bold and new. So its important to explore all both traditional and newer funding options and pick the one that best fits you and your business best.

For example, you might be able to get a traditional small business loan, just beware of prepayment and other penalties that are part of the agreement. Newer types of options to consider include crowdfunding, online lenders and non-profit lenders. You might also consider applying for a loan from the U.S. Small Business Association.